Friday, December 12, 2014

With
the mass production of genetically modified soy, Monsanto and Cargill
produced some big plans for feeding the fish of the sea. But the
Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board, and the Norwegian Food Safety
Authority decided not to participate in these plans – as it could lead to an environmental disaster.

Due to environmental and health concerns revolving around
fish given GMO feed that code for antibiotic resistance, Norwegian
authorities have stopped approving GM feed for fish. This applies to 8 of the 19 GMO feed varieties that the biotech industry currently pushes on fish farms.

“The American soy industry is powerful. It has been
able to fund many studies on using soy for fish feed; it has built
relationships in the aquaculture industry; and it has publicly supported
federal policies in favor of offshore aquaculture.… Soy does not have the full array of nutrients demanded by fish,
however; nor is it a natural fish food or substance in the marine
environment. In fact, using soy may cause some fish farms to pollute
more by producing extra waste. Further, the negative ramifications of
the soy industry on the environment and potentially on our health are
reasons to resist the allure of soy as a “savior” of the aquaculture
industry.The cultivation of soy is associated with agricultural runoff
that is contributing to the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, with
deforestation in Latin America and with the displacement of many
indigenous peoples from their homes and work.As soy becomes increasingly ubiquitous in our diets — in
processed foods and the meat from animals that have been raised on it —
we must ask what health impacts this high level of soy consumption may
have on us. Scientists are beginning to question claims about the
benefits of eating soy and to suggest that the plant-based estrogens
that occur naturally in soy, many of which are endocrine disruptors,
could potentially have adverse impacts.In light of these concerns and unanswered questions, it is
troubling to know that much of our fish — one of our last wild foods —
could be fattened on this crop.”

About half of the world’s fish comes from aquaculture, or industrial fish farming. The practice has had problems such as overcrowding of tanks or growth sites, pollution, and contaminating the ocean with more GMOs.

Only recently have people needed to be concerned about GM-fed fish.
There are extremely sustainable and of course, non-GMO methods, of
growing fish as a food source, though. According to the World Resources Institute, “New
research shows that aquaculture production will need to more than
double again between now and 2050 to meet the demands of a growing
population.”

Even wild fish are being threatened by unsustainable fishing
practices, with estimates that our oceans could be fished out by 2050.
As Ted Barber has explained in an edifying Ted Talk, “. . .it
takes fifteen pounds of wild fish to get you one pound of farm tuna.
Not very sustainable. It doesn’t taste very good either.” But one
man has completely reversed ecological damage (without using GMOs I
might add) by building a 27,000-acre, completely sustainable fish farm
in the Argentinean wetlands. It doesn’t rely on a single Big Ag method
of farming.

The Norwegian fish industry authorities had given permission
to biotech to use GM soy and other contaminates in fish feed since 2008,
but new research helped them change their minds:

The
fear is that genes in the GM feed that code for antibiotic resistance
may be taken up by various bacteria in the soil in the country where the
GMO is produced, in the feed production chain, or in the gut of the
fish. Scientists know little about to what extent, or if, this happens
with genes that are inserted via genetic modification, but few would
deny that it could happen. If the genes first have entered into a
bacterium [during the genetic engineering process], they may quickly
spread further.”

Norwegian authorities have repeatedly expressed concern over antibiotic-resistant infections, which are rendering antibiotics completely useless.
Considering the new evidence pointing to the fact that human and animal
guts take up the antibiotic resistance genes from GMOs, this is no
small feat toward defeating the biotech machine.

A translation of the Norwegian press article on the antibiotic marker genes in fish feed is available here.

Healthesound.info

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